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Monday, June 24, 2013

When Everything Changes

This time next week, I will be unemployed.

I haven't been unemployed since I was 14. Today I'm, well let's just say the number has not started with a 1 for a long time!

I didn't set out to not have a job. I haven't not had a job in such a long time, I don't even remember what it's like. Late last year we bought a new house, that came with a very large mortgage. I planned on having a job well into the foreseeable future. Then at the beginning of this year some things happened on that front that found me at a crossroads. And after much prayer, angsting and God answering in some pretty miraculous ways to my Gideon fleece moments of "God, if you want me to quit, then please do X, Y and Z" it became crystal clear that His time for me where I am is done.

And so with no safety net, no irons in the fire, no clamoring job offers, I'm walking into the unknown.

And it feels good.

The last few months have been a limbo land. Firstly with coming to terms with quitting with nowhere to go and then watching the doors to various opportunities either close resoundingly shut or sense that they are not doors He has for me to walk through.

This time in a week, I will wake up, send my husband off to work and my toddler off to daycare and I will write. For all of July, I am going to be a fulltime writer until I finish the first draft of my current project.

No more excuses. No more hiding behind, "I'm work full-time and am a pastor's wife and a toddler mom and my house looks like something exploded, so it's a miracle I can scratch out the few thousand words a week that I do" whining. My butt is going to be planted in a chair for hours at a time, day after day. Until it is done.

I am excited. I am grateful. I am terrified.

What if I can't do it? What if I show up and the words don't? What if I do it, but my agent hates the result? What if I spend all this time writing when I could be looking for a new job and no one wants it? What if I've had this dream of being a writer for all these years, and then when I get the opportunity, I discover that I hate it? Why do I get this opportunity, when there are real writers out there, with real contracts, and actual published books, who would give their left leg for this?

A friend text me recently. Psalm 62: My soul finds rest in God alone.
Teetering on the brink of the unknown. My soul finds rest in God alone. I don't know what this new life will look like. No suits. No 24/7 Blackberry. No opening the weekend papers and getting angry. No days where I leave home before my son wakes up and get back after he is asleep. No knowing if the next book I write will find favor with publishers. No knowing when I might return to my profession, or if a whole new one lies around the next turn. My soul finds rest in God alone.

Because when everything changes, one thing doesn't. The One who holds it all.

Kara Isaac lives in Wellington, New Zealand with her pastor husband and ninja toddler. Her husband holds out great hopes that her "time-out" will also mean cleaning the bathroom every now and then.

Writing contemporary romance, she is proudly represented by Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary Inc. and loves to be found on Facebook and Twitter.

I am excited for you, Kara. with such clear direction from the Lord He must have something special for you - and it seems to be your writing.A word of warning: I urge you to look on your writing as your "job". When I stopped nursing and wrote full time (as much as I could then!) folk at church said things like "Now you're not working anymore, Mary, could you now do..."I had to learn to say things like, "Sorry, I still do have a job. It is writing, even if I am doing it at home and not nursing at the hospital." Friends also thought I could now drop everything for a social activity. Do guard your writing time. It does take more discipline to work at your job at home too I think!

Blessings on your new "employment" for you are NOT without a job. And God, while a gentle taskmaster, should never take a back seat to anyone. As Mary said, you have to treat this just like a job and not allow intrusions on your work day. Just remember "no" is not a bad word.